Monthly Archives: April 2016

Health, life and capacity for work are the values on which the family and social well-being of each modern person is built. A person’s health is the capital, which every successful person is trying to maintain it at a high level throughout life. The foreign and domestic researches are showing that the risk of dying from medical malpractice, medical negligence or medical errors is the tens and hundreds of times higher than the one in car accidents, air crashes and etc.

To get any service, we are guided by the previously acquired experiences. So, when buying food products in the store, we check its appearance and features; when hiring a carpenter we tend to check a portfolio; going to a hairdresser, we can calculate precisely how we will look in 20-30 minutes; signing a mortgage, a loan agreement for the years ahead, we foresee the result.

However, when getting medical service, in most cases, we can guess and hope for the results in medical intervention, and the probabilities here could be numerous. By agreeing to have a complicated abdominal surgery, most people refer to the risk of medical errors with ‘understanding’; psychologically, some are even ready death, especially if a consent is signed, notifying them of the likelihood of death.

That is, people are mostly ‘humanly’ ready to forgive a physician incompetency, medical negligence or medical error.
In everyday life the risk may be justified only if the person possessing a full and objective information on the factors influencing the occurrence of adverse events to their health and takes his own conscious decision to act.

At the same time, perceiving the mandatory approval of the attending physician for the ultimate truth, we deliberately abandon many civil rights; for example – informed consent, holding a consultation in the presence of a medical lawyer and etc.

Medicine around the world – is primarily a huge-profit business. The experience of medical lawyers organisations and medical negligence solicitors, dealing with the protection of the rights of patients, shows that 50-70% of the official information contained in the medical records is at least partially false, and therefore does not reflect an objective picture of the health status of the patient.

Most probably you haven’t noticed that healthcare workers and doctors do not like the ‘witnesses’ in the course of the conversation or consultation with the patient or during medical procedures. Of course, it is explained by a good number of factors, but partially, it is a defensive position depriving you from certain evidence in the future (in the event something goes wrong). Most investigations into medical error ‘stumble’ on the facts of false information contained in the medical records and medical history, concealing medical errors. When having a closer look on the state of affairs, different facts become obvious. Thus, in an NPR article it is said the amount of lethal outcomes caused by medical errors and negligence in the US accounts for around 444,000 annually, not 44,000 – 78,000 according to the official statistics.

Patients should be confident that they, along with their doctor, have decided to conduct a surgery or to take medication with possible side effects; thus, in the event of an unfavorable outcome of the treatment the results are more likely to be perceived as associated risks, not as negligence of the physician. Errors in relationship between doctors and patients are not rare in medical practice; reducing their number can be achieved by relationships of trust, based on the achievements of modern medical science, compliance technologies and high level of staff.

As a rule, the causes of conflict on the basis of dissatisfaction of patients of treatment are:

low quality of medical services as a result of non-compliance examination and diagnosis of diseases of organs and systems before the start of treatment and lack of control measures on its stages (non-compliance of the rules of medical manipulations);